The Court is wrapping up Decision Season with some decisions that have a significant impact on the way our Government has become accustomed to operating. And there is a little more on the surreal Debate performance last night. We will keep it short, and apologize for the intrusion. We try to only bother you once in the morning, but it is now afternoon, and we will try to keep it short.

Debate: Discussion has been animated. Some consensus: the presence and performance at the event must have been intentional. The State of the Union hopped-up energy was absent. Whoever is running the show sent him out to fail. The real goal must be to replace him. We will see how that goes. These are historic times.

We were going to balance the Debate reaction this morning with some SCOTUS updates, but the astonishing performance last night took our attention away. Here is some of the other events that will signify a lot of discussion with which we won’t bore you before the weekend when we all may have a chance to think. Rather than bewildered reaction.

Here are the decisions. The Admin State took another blow this morning on the Chevron and Fishing cases. The shared themes were that the Admin State, and rule by the Executive Branch, were out of control. It is an old, even traditional struggle between the branches. SCOTUS has been out of control in the past as well, notably when it decided Roe v. Wade years ago. The 2022 decision overturning it did not render abortion illegal, but returned the matter to state jurisdiction. It was only a partial verdict on the Idaho matter, possibly an attempt to deflect the major issue from putting the Court in the election crosshairs.

The Big one this morning is Chevron, of course, and the apparent decision to reign in the inexorable march of the bureaucrats. In 1984, the Court held in Chevron that lower courts should defer to Federal Agencies for regulatory decisions when Congressional intent was unclear. This morning, that deference was overturned. There is immediate reaction, saying that will make regulating the environment, public health, workplace safety and other issues more difficult. We sympathize, of course, since we shouldn’t rely on elected people responsible for the impact of their decisions to guide public policy. We should allow someone anonymous with civil service protection to do so unilaterally, right?

The companion decision on the two Fishing cases amounts to the same thing, in that forcing small fishing companies to hire additional crew to enforce compliance with regulations puts them at a disadvantage competitively on the world ocean with other companies not subject to regulation.

The observations should not be construed as favoring un-regulation. But what was overturned was the exercise of unilateral power. There is a difference. Maybe.

The other decision we haven’t discussed yet is the camping-in-public-parks case that invoked alleged 8th Amendment rights agains cruel & unusual punishment. The Court said something fairly rational, which is that such camping is not a de facto protected right, and that cities could ban homeless encampments but didn’t have to.

Against the strange spectacle of two elderly men arguing about their golf handicaps on a global broadcast of international significance, the Court decisions provide interesting context. The Court has been used as an activist branch of our tripartite government before. The current bench is pulling back some of those rulings as excessive, since the ruling suggest that changes should be made, if necessary, by the elected Legislature.

But that is what the election fight is about, you know? Like who gets to shape the members of the Court. And why the Debate was so strange. Makes you wonder what is next. Was this the precursor to a 25th Amendment demonstration with VP Harris as the answer? There are issues with that. Gavin Newsom as the replacement, flying in from the disaster that is once-magnificent California?

We would take our tents down to the park in protest, but the City Council might make that illegal, according to the Court. What darn fun! We mentioned the $35 Trillion debt in the earlier piece. That did not address the unfunded $157 Trillion in promised Social Security benefits to go along with it.

Clearly unsustainable, right? Have we even begun a rational public discussion on how to pay for it? Or whether the system we throw together to do so produces any place we want to live? More on that when some of the shock fades…

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com